Questions tagged [geophysics]
For questions relating to geophysics: the study, behavior, consequences, and technologies involving the physical properties of the Earth.
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Any advice on what is a realistic way to use plate tectonics to create landmasses and barriers?
Recently I've taken it upon myself to create a brand new fantasy world. I created fantasy settings in the past but this is the first one with such a strong emphasis on realism and staying true to our ...
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Would there be a point to windfarms in a country surrounding a bay and is also almost fully surrounded by mountain ranges?
To better demonstrate my question, here's a very shoddily made image I made in Photoshop in under five minutes.
Essentially this country is an almost full ring of land with a natural barrier of ...
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Mountain heights - theoretical limits
I have a country bounded on three sides by fold mountains. Due to a magical plot device, the force acting to drive the upward motion of the mountains persists indefinitely, acting on the plates ...
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Would an asteroid colliding with a terrestrial planet result in the creation of extensive caves nearby the crater?
I just did some research on the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which is the crater from the asteroid responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Yucatán itself does have ...
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How long would it take for earth to dry up?
At current global warming rates, the sea levels are rising because the ice caps are melting. But once the ice caps are all melted, the sea would stay the same.
In my world, humanity's money revolves ...
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Is there any scientific way a ship could fall off the edge of the world? [closed]
I'm trying to write a story about falling off the edge of he earth during a sea voyage and would like to incorporate as much as detailed and accurate physics as possible.
For this to work, I know ...
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What pressure, temperature and atmospheric challenges exist for human habitation 1 mile beneath the surface of the earth?
Would air pressure be demonstrably greater in a subterranean city at a depth of 1 mile? Lava tubes leading into a dormant magma chamber -- this would have challenging gasses that would need to be ...
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Black hole at the center of the planet
Okay, picture a planet so massive, a black hole has formed in its center. The minimum mass of a black hole is 22 micrograms, or the Planck mass, and whatever the core is made of, it needs to be ...
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Planet covered in non-Newtonian fluid
Basically, I watched that horrible holiday special. The animated short that introduced our friend Boba Fett, and there’s a planet that’s apparently covered completely by a non-Newtonian fluid. What ...
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Could ants thrive on mars if they stayed underground? [closed]
Lets say humans would want to populate Mars with ants. Would it be possible for an ant colony to create a self sustaining ecosystem underground on Mars, by for example farming fungi, like some ants do?...
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How to get Rodinia/Pangaea to now in a year?
I was reading this article, and noticed this section:
At the opposite end of the plates, the presence of water underground changes how easy or hard it is for one plate to subduct beneath another in a ...
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How Would the Mountains Form in This Supercontinent?
Here is a supercontinent map generated randomly from the Donjon website:
Now, hold on just a minute. Something looks wrong. The mountains in brown and white are too far inland to be caused by ...
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Does extreme atmospheric pressure increase or decrease the power of weather?
The world I have imagined is much like Venus, with an atmosphere at "sea level" 70 times that of Earth, and temperatures at the same altitude approaching 377 degrees Celsius - with much more ...
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Inverted Everest world
I want to make a world with a great deal of variation in habitability in terms of temperature and pressure. Some areas would be habitable; others less so, some would require protective clothing and ...
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Can the Little Prince's planet actually exist in our universe?
This is a drawing by my daughter which inspired one of the elements in my story/world:
The perspective is a little bit mixed here (certainly I don't have a 15 meter-high volcano in this world), but ...
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